THE ORGANISERS OF MISCHIEF

Hokitika Guardian, 5 September 1917, Page 4

THE ORGANISERS OF MISCHIEF

BERNSTORFF AND CO

(By Frederic William Wile.)

In the midst of our preoccupation with the Hun menace aloft, afloat, and ashore we ought not to lose sight of its diplomatic tentacles. These are now being spread with quite particular energy in Sweden and Norway.

Events having put an abrupt end to German scliemings in the Far! West and the Far Fast—in the United States and China—-they have been promptly resumed in the Far North by the expert plotters who until a few months ago were intriguing for Kaiser and Fatherland in Washington and Peking. I refer to Count von Bernstorff, who is now “ co-ordinating ” German interests at Stockholm, and to Admiral von Hintze, late Atinisler to China, who has taken charge at Christiana. Von Hintze followed the Berlin Foreign Office’s bomb shipment, to Norway a few days after “ diplomatic courier ” Rautenfels’ arrest; von Bernstorff has been in Sweden for some weeks. They have now joined hands across, the peaceful Scandinavian peninsula. I know them and their special talents well, and I say advisedly that they will bear the closest watching which Allied vigilance is capable of bestowing upon them. Trouble and turmoil have followed in their wake during the past ten j r ears as inevitably as night succeeded day. They have never been assigned to missions which did not hide some dark Prussian strategem with consequences eventually disastrous to the countries which they blighted with their domicile.

Bernstorff’s careeT is part of con • temporary history, aud is well known to most Englishmen who keep abreast ofinternational affairs. His nativity predestined him to be a specialist iu Knglish-speaking environments, for he was born in London when his father was Prus sian Minister to the Court of St James. From 1902 to 1906 Berustorff was Councillor of the German Embassy in London, where he devoted himself and his undoubted powers of agreeableness and personal magnetism to the task of regaining tlie favour of British

“society” which Germany forfeited during the Boer War. From 1906 to 1908 Bernstorff was the Kaiser’s Diplomatic Agent ana Consul-General at Cairo. In 190 S he became Ambassador at Washington, aud lor nearly nine years he was occupied in spinning that nation-wide well of espionage, in trigue, and internecine strife which the American Government and people have not vet even contrived to tear to pieces. Bernstorff builded well and deep in the United .States. 1 A. RKYOT.UTION MAKER. Admiral von Hintze is, if possible, even a more consummate organiser of mischief than Berustorffi Ilis successive places ol abode since 1905 speak tor themselves—Russia, Mexico, and China. Revolutions would seem to be his forte. For many years the Houses of Hoheuzollern and Romanoff maintained a remarkable system of “personal adjutants” at each other’s Courts. -Nominally only courtiers who “flounced about” with the Sovereigns on spectacular occasions as members of the Imperial entourages, these “ adju tants” were in realit) r super-Am-bassadors in Berlin and Petrograd. Their inissions were to spy out ceaselessly that strange land which hedges a throne. In the' case of the Kaiser’s emissary at tlie Winter Palace and Tsarskoe Selo, we may be sure that the work was done with vaunted Prussian Grundlichkeit (thoroughness). Von Hintze, a shrewd young naval officer at the time, was appointed to be a la suite oftheCzaron William IPs behalf about the time of the 1905 Russian Revolution He rendered such effective service in the realm of underground diplomacy in Petrograd that he was appointed German Minister to Mexico about 1911, when the Diaz-Madero-Huerta crisis plunged that unhappy Republic into eternal chaos.

In the United States Government’s archives there is evidence in .jßeiit}' to show that German intrigue had more than its share in keeping the fires of Mexican unrest burning. Leaving them well alight, with a Villa Carranza feud to ensure their unquencliability, von Hintze was promoted again—this time to become supervisor-in-chief of Germany’s machinations in China. His activities were restless in Peking from 1914 until his dismissal by the Chinese Government a few weeks ago. I pay von 'Hintze the tribute of believing that the War-or-No-War-with-Germany revolution now convulsing China is to no inconsiderable extent the fruit of his labour. These are the men now at the helm of German affairs in Northern Europe. Their records are a guarantee that they will stick at nothing to undermine Allied interests in that region. It is undoubtedly something more than a coincidence that even remote Turkey hasjust established a “special mission” in Stockholm, and placed at its head a notorious Young Turk mischief-maker, Ismail Jaubolat, late chief of the Turkish Secret Police and one of the organisers of Armenian massacres. We shall do well to keep a sharp eye on Herren Bernstorff, Hintze, and Jandolat.